Standing Stone / Menhir

Fieldnotes

Situated down a side road on the left about 1 mile south of Matfen village on the edge of an impeccably manicured grass verge lies the Matfen stone. A strange fortified house/farm is across the road and whoever owns it obviously likes to keep the stone from becoming overgrown which is cool (although their reuse of the old pump down the road as a flower basket hanger is a tad twee).

The stone is about six foot high and has the same deep harsh vertical grooves caused by weathering as the Devil's Arrows. What's different about the Matfen Stone is the many cupmarks carved around the base (well over thirty).

Not really a place to stop and linger (you have the uncomfortable feeling someone is tut-tutting at you from behind a curtain across the road), but a good antidote if you've had too much of Hadrian's Wall.